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It's bloomin' Christmas again. Time for Father Christmas
to prepare his sled,
don his suit and boots and head off on his weary bloomin' way, delivering
presents around the world....

'Father Christmas' won the Library Association Kate Greenaway Medal - 1973
Dialogue is minimal, restricted in the main to Santa's 'bloomin' expletives
as he delivers his goodies to girls and boys across the country and the
world - he even drops in on Buckingham Palace...

Trivia Hounds may note that the author's father, Ernest Briggs
and his milkfloat put in an appearance:

It doesn't scan that well, but the number plate reads:

ERB 1900 = Ernest Raymond Briggs, born 1900.

Ernest was employed as a Co-op milkman for some 30 years.
Sadly, he died just before 'Father Christmas' was published.

The book was so successful it spawned a sequel, 'Father Christmas Goes
On Holiday'. Both books were combined into an animated film by TVC
in 1991with Mel Smith providing Santa's bloomin' voice.

In 1989, that most irreverent of parody comics 'Oink!' provided us
with a bloomin' good pastiche of this classic in their Oink! book.
In the strip, 'Farver Chrismuss by Raymond Piggs' we see grumpy
Santa smashing his alarm clock, kicking his cat down the stairs,
and shooting at his reindeer before getting a boot up his own
backside for having gone around folks' homes on Boxing Day.
It's a bloomin' good pastiche, and looks remarkably like the
Briggs original!